John is one of the UK's leading personal injury solicitors, with over 28 years of experience. In addition to his role as Director of Spencers Solicitors, he is an advocate for claimant rights and believes that wholesale reform to the personal injury arena is needed to ensure transparency, access to justice and the protection of injured people. In this blog, John writes regularly about these issues.

Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Recently, I wrote about the arguments in favour of legislating to make
cyclists have to wear cycle helmets. Doing so got me thinking about a sport
which, unlike cycling, doesn’t also double as a gentle recreational pursuit.
It’s a sport with an illustrious history dating all the way back to the
original Olympics of Ancient Greece, but it’s one which is fraught with all
manner of issues – and it certainly isn’t gentle. What am I talking about? Why,
none other than the noble art or, depending on your viewpoint, licensed
thuggery that is boxing.

Boxing has been with us for centuries and now permeates our everyday
language to such an extent that I sometimes feel that we must all be pugilists.
Phrases like ‘it’s time to step up to the mark’, ‘he’s on the ropes’ and ‘he’ll
have to take this one on the chin’ all come from boxing. We use them now
without even knowing where they come from. Granted, if we think about it we can
all hazard a guess at what ‘on the ropes’ and ‘taking it on the chin’ mean, but
how many of us understand the provenance of ‘stepping up to the mark’? For the
record, my understanding is that it’s a reference to a line – a mark – drawn on
the ground, either side of which two prize-fighters would stand before the
commencement of hostilities.

That was way back when, before the codification of boxing by the
Marquess of Queensberry in 1867. Since then, what was always a brutal sport –
where initially fighters would simply trade blows until there was just one man
left standing – has become more sanitized, especially in the amateur ranks,
where headguards are compulsory and doing battle is confined to three
two-minute rounds. But regardless of whether the Queensberry Rules are applied
in the professional fight game or amid the amateur divisions, there is no
escaping one simple fact: boxing is about the intentional infliction of
violence by one human being on another.

To be a good boxer, you need to be able to hit your opponent as hard and
as painfully as possible. For this reason, people die in boxing matches or a
few days after them. The former middleweight world champion Alan Minter is a
popular and respected British sportsman, but in 1978 his knock out of Angelo
Jacopucci in a twelve-round title fight led to the latter’s death a few days
later. Three years ago, the Korean boxer Yo-Sam Choi was killed despite
actually winning a world flyweight title. He was punched to the canvas (or
‘dropped’, as boxers have it) with five seconds of his fight against Heri Amol
remaining. Choi beat the count and won the fight, but collapsed while still in
the ring after the bout. He was rushed to hospital, where he underwent brain
surgery, only to die just over a week after the fight.

Jacopucci and Choi are far from the only men to have died thanks to
boxing. Others have sustained terrible brain injuries; even the best of them
all, Muhammed Ali, is now a shadow of his former ebullient self. It is
impossible not to conclude that Ali’s Parkinson’s Disease is a consequence of his
years in the ring, while other boxers of decidedly more journeyman status end
up with damaged cervical spines thanks to the repeated whiplash of being
punched in the face.

Is it right that a civilised society continues to allow boxing? When we
look at the damage caused by the so-called noble art, should we really endorse
governmental proposals to bring it back into schools, because it is somehow
‘character-forming’? Ask any neurosurgeon if he would allow his son (or
daughter!) to take up boxing and the answer is predictable, as such
professionals know how easy it is to damage the brain. Is it right that our taxes should go towards
treating those who consensually batter one another?

When asked about this particular
issue, the chief executive of Headway, Peter McCabe, said, “Headway supports
the British Medical Association’s view that Boxing should be banned. The
evidence is overwhelming that repeated blows to the head causes chronic brain
injury. Anyone taking up boxing is needlessly risking their health.”

The Times sports writer Simon Barnes perennially voices his
antipathy to boxing. I confess I hadn’t thought it through in great detail
before, but now that I have I find it very hard to disagree with him. What do
you think? Should boxing be banned, or should we accept it, as, for one reason
or another, has been the case for centuries?

Wednesday, 7 December 2011

At long
last, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has announced a date for the
application process for those wishing to avail themselves of the Alternative
Business Structure (ABS) regime. Appropriately enough, the date is 3 January,
the first working day of 2012. After what seems an age since Sir David Clementi
first proposed them (six years, in fact), the new year thus ushers in the brave
new world of the ABS.

Is it,
though, a world which we will like? I am not so sure. ABSs were much trumpeted
following the passing of the Legal Services Act 2007, given that they will
revolutionise the way in which solicitors run their businesses and allow
non-lawyers to own and invest in law firms. Many high street sole practitioners
and some small firms, fearful of the advent of ‘Tesco law’, were quick to sound
a cautionary note over the ABS regime, but they are not the only people who
have reason to worry. Those of us who believe in the legal profession,
especially in the personal injury sector, also have cause for concern.

For me, ABSs are Trojan horses
in the battle against referral fees, in particular, and the sometimes over
aggressive and unprofessional approach to PI marketing. They enable insurers
and claims management companies to own and invest in law firms, thereby
circumventing efforts by the Ministry of Justice to reform and improve the
personal injury sector – because insurers and claims management companies
could, in 2012, now start handling PI claims from start to finish. They will
therefore control the whole process.

Antony
Townsend, the chief executive of the SRA, is looking forward to the new world,
saying, in a press release dated 1 December: “We welcome the news that we will
become an ABS licensing authority from 23 December. This is a milestone that we
have been working towards for nearly two years.” He goes on to add that “the
public can have confidence that ABS providing reserved legal activities will be
regulated according to the same rigorous professional standards as traditional
law firms.”

But
how will the ABS regime tackle this issue? There is also a raft of ancillary
fees paid by those outside the legal profession, the likes of medico-legal
companies, garages, reporting engineers and towing companies. These bodies all
habitually pay referral fees, thereby fuelling a vicious circle of money
generation around some personal injury cases. What does the SRA intend to do about this, and
the fact that these companies are likely to apply for licenses to set up ABSs?

There is, though, still time to
deal with this issue. The ABS regime gets underway from 3 January, but it does
not emerge complete and fully formed. The date represents the start of the
application process, but it is thought that actual ABS licences will not be
awarded until late February at the earliest. It is to be hoped, between now and
then, that a way is found to ensure that the brave new world of ABSs does not
undermine that part of the government’s commitment, namely profiteering out of
personal injury claims, which many of us support. It is further to be hoped
that the professional conduct of cases by the solicitors profession is fully
recognised and protected in this short period,
and not fatally undermined.